When Brandon took over the leadership of the First Men, the dragons had been defeated, their Cult driven out of their lands, and the wights cremated and put to rest. The sun had finally risen over Westeros, and spring was upon them - however, the ice born of three generations of winter was slow to melt, and three generations of hunting had left the woods they lived in quite barren of game to be killed.

While he could not devour the souls of dragons, as his father could, Brandon's Voice was still powerful. And while he was not as great - would never be as great - as his father was in battle, Brandon was wise. After years of war and turmoil, what the men needed the most was rest and stability - and that could only be achieved at the leadership of a wise man. The men recognized Brandon's wisdom, and listened to him when he bade them to settle far to the south of the last tomb of the draugr, when he bade them to build their houses out of stone, and when he bade them to take up the the plow once more, even after three generations in the dark.

It took strength and might to topple the rule of oppressive tyrants, but it took so much more than that to build a new society out of the ashes of that very rule.

It took wisdom, to know that the easy path is not necessarily the best path to take. Brandon knew that if he told the men to make their homes out of wood, they would follow, and would have houses by the end of three moons. He also knew that it would only take the same amount of time before the houses were felled by great storms, or before the roofs cave in from the weight of the snow accumulated in early Spring.

Brandon had his people build their homes out of stone. They were all made warmer, and safer, by his wisdom.

It took foresight too, to know that the while the spring snows would eventually give way to summer, autumn will follow quickly, and winter will come again. When it returns, it would be just as cold and bitter as the one that came before. It takes foresight not to be deceived by the banks of the White Knife - while the river might be full trout and salmon in the summer, in the winter, the waters will freeze, and the banks will be flooded as the river melts in the spring.

Brandon has his people build their homes near hot springs at the edge of the Wolfswood. The heat of the springs spread out over land near it, allowing the men to till it, even in the cold of the early spring.

Lastly, it takes caution to be able to build a stable society over the ruins of the previous one. Even after years had passed, and they had harvested their first, second, third, fourth crops of wheat, still Brandon could not shake off the feeling that a disaster was was waiting for them, hidden among the needles of the sentinel trees of the forests surrounding their town. It was caution that drove Brandon's hand, when he began to construct what would later on become known as the castle Winterfell. A large structure, with many rooms and thick, stone walls was built over the hot springs, with a twenty-foot wall was built surrounding it. Guard towers were erected to help the castle become more defensible, and a deep moat was dug around the perimeter. It took five long years to complete, but Brandon was satisfied.

Brandon's instinct was correct. The winter following the Long Night - barely ten years after - Nahkriin and his forces returned with a vengeance, determined to strike down the men who had dared to rebel against his Cult. Grimly, Brandon ordered the women and children to take shelter within the walls of Winterfell, and, taking his staff with him, led the men out to defeat the Others once and for all.

He was not as great a warrior as his father. He struggled with the words for destructive Shouts and battle cries, and his magic was not suited to war. However, his Voice was strong in its own way - any man who heard him were inspired by his words, and rejoined the battle with renewed valor and strength.

The men were able to rout Nahkriin's army, and the wights fled back North. Determined to put an end to the fighting, Brandon followed to wipe out the Draugr once and for all. But it was a trap - Nahkriin was waiting for him at the edge of what would be known as the Haunted Forest, and used his magics to send ice and snow at the men to freeze them to death. A quarter of Brandon's army died then, and in a bid to protect his men, he used all he knows about building and creating and crafting to Shout a Wall into existence.

Wahl Lot Vund, he shouted at Nahkriin, and the earth before him shifted, compacted into stone, and rose of its own accord to protect Brandon and his men. In response, the priest doubled the ice and frost, but Brandon cunningly wove all of it into the wall, using it to fortify it and to enlargen it. They carried on for days - with Nahkriin attempting to circumvent Brandon's wall of ice, and Brandon defending at all costs - until one of them wore out and died.

It was not Brandon.

With their leader gone, the rest of the cult retreated. The men were relieved, but Brandon knew in his gut that the Others would return, just as he had known that Nahkriin would. And so he continued to build the Wall, with the help of his men, and wove his magic into the Wall itself, to prevent any Undead from crossing over into their territories. He Shouted up a fortress, established the Night's Watch, and, with the rest of the Wall completed, headed back home, to Winterfell.

His father Talos was a hero. Talos led the men out of the dark, and put an end to the tyrannical rule of the frost dragons with the strength of his arms and the power of his Voice. Brandon though, was not a hero. He was a leader, a mage, a builder, but above all, he was a protector, and everything he ever did was in service of the people his father left for him to govern.

When he returned to Winterfell, he became King.

A/N:

Bran the Builder sort of wrote himself into the Alteration-Restoration mage build. I don't regret it though - his very name implies that his achievements in building were more important than his military achievements, and it suited the mage build just fine.

Now that I've made him a mage, though, I think I'm going to have to play with the idea of putting up a College. This might spawn a couple more one-shots than I intended.

That said, I'm not very happy with how this chapter turned out, but I'm doing this thing where I post things as quickly as I can so I can expel the plot bunnies from my system, and finally get some fucking sleep. Tell me what you think!

Translations: Wahl Lot Vund Literally "Build Great Wall". I kind of made up a dragon shout to go for Bran the Builder. Although he does use a legit Shout - props to anyone who guesses what it is! The words are hidden somewhere in the chapter.

As always - I don't own either Skyrim or ASoIF. Bethesda and GRRM own those respectively.